Without A Family
by charming.cheerios
Summary: "Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold."
1. Sunday Mornings

**********Characters / Pairing:** Rose & Scorpius******  
****Location:** Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.******  
Headcanon: **Rose read every Sunday morning by the Black Lake, and Scorpius always joined her with his own book - Scorpius often bought Rose muggle novels, always the prettiest he could find in old bookshops.**  
****Disclaimer**: I don't own anything but this piece of writing. Credit goes to J.K Rowling for her characters, and the person who submitted these headcanons.

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**Sunday Mornings.**

If there was one day out of the entire week that was most anticipated in his agenda, it was Sunday - Friday coming in a close second. But nothing could quite compare to the Sunday mornings at the Black Lake that he'd grown to love. When the sun was just beginning to rise and mirrored by the waters surface, when the grounds were considerably empty and void of any disturbances, and where she sat with her back to a tree trunk with her knees drawn up and a book opened in her lap. Scorpius wasn't much of a sentimental young man. At only 16 - going on 17 this May, mind you - he didn't look much into things; he didn't think that such simple little things should matter as much as they did, but he wouldn't change these moments for the world. He wondered what these Sundays mornings would be like after they'd graduated from Hogwarts. It was a routine he had gotten so used to he couldn't remember what he had done before, something he wasn't ready to shake. But, they had the rest of this year and the next to determine their future and what else is held in store for them. He figured he would be busy, working as Potioneer and spend these Sunday mornings sleeping off a hangover caused by a previous night of relaxation with his mates from work, or his best friends of currently six years. Or maybe someone more.

Scorpius pulled a black and white flannel button-up over his tank top, the sleeves cuffed at the elbows and gathered a book from one of his drawers. _White Fang_, a 1906 Jack Landon muggle classic that he'd just started reading as per a Ravenclaw's recommendation. He hadn't a clue what it was about, because honestly he hadn't bothered to read the summary on the back, but he had finished his last novel the previous Sunday and was not going to show up empty handed. It wasn't a particularly long book, quite small really, but he doubted he'd finish it any time soon in the foreseeable future. He was a slow reader, if not a bit distracted. With one final glance at his sleeping roommates, Albus stirring underneath his blankets and the other two obscured by the curtains around their beds, the young blonde quietly exited the room, careful not to wake them. They wouldn't question where he'd gone when they awoke later that morning and he knew that for fact; they had long since gotten used to the idea of him disappearing every Sunday to spend it elsewhere. It took him a minimal amount of time to exit the Slytherin Dungeons, and even a shorter amount of time to reach Hogwarts grounds, the Black Lake just in his view. As expected, it was particularly empty this early in the morning. Book brushing against the fabric of his jeans he approached the very same tree he always had, his shows crunching against the fallen leaves of late Autumn and a noticeable chill in the air. It was nearing December now, in maybe less than a week; perhaps he should have brought a scarf along, or a worn a heavier shirt.

If she had heard him approach, she certainly didn't make any indication that she had. She was bundled in more sensible clothing than he was, looking as beautiful as ever and her back perched against the trunk of the tree, her knees brought up to support the novel pressed against her thighs. He recognized the bindings almost immediately; vastly different from the previous session, but familiar all the same. The pages edges were gilded, bound in a worn emerald leather with intricate vine patterns around the edges and the spine, decorating the title in beige. _Plays of Sheridan_, purchased by himself at an Antiquarian bookstore in muggle London as a birthday present that September - something he wouldn't have been able to collect if it hadn't been for her brother, who had made sure he didn't get lost. He sat down at a comfortable distance beside her, their shoulders hardly grazing on another's, and one leg stretched out whilst the other bent. He opened his own book to the first page, the text too small for him to see without squinting (he wouldn't admit it, but his eyesight perhaps wasn't the best), but his gaze lingered upon his companion beside him. And when she cast that knowingly familiar glance at him in return, a delicate smile gracing pink lips, Scorpius momentarily forgot how to breathe.

Her eyes were like diamonds, he decided.

Breathtaking and beautiful and strong, though stimulating as weak, like a friable wilting flower. Perhaps it was not just her eyes that portrayed this eerie resemblance, but her demeanor, her_self_. A simple jewel to describe the persona and appearance of a girl seemed perchance a tad far-fetched, but the other analogy's given were cliché and overused and this bird in particular was everything but unoriginal. A rose with thorns, a firecracker, or, the chastest of them all, a _sass queen_. The lack of creative existence in the minds of his peers was bewildering and disrespectful for a girl that should be displayed high upon a pedestal. A diamond - the perfect equivalence. There was however, just one flaw of his analytical comparison. As any gemstone, the diamond drew in the attention of others and, should it have human qualities, he did not doubt that it would crave for it off of others like a vulture would prey. His diamond (he may have been a little possessive, though she certainly did not belong to him) was not even close to attention-seeking. For the years he had known her he had grown to understand that, no matter what another person would say, her mind was her own worst enemy. She had conjured this illustration of who she was supposed to be, what she should look like, and picked at herself because she was just simply "not enough." It pained him and others that cared for her to hear her say she was not beautiful enough or skinny enough, or smart enough - because she was all those things. She was gorgeous, as light as a feather, and bloody brilliant (admittedly however, a touch lazy with her academics) and everyone knew it but her. So no, perhaps diamonds were not quite the perfect correlation.

Rose Weasley was a walking, breathing symbol of tasteful perfection and Scorpius Malfoy could not have her.

Essentially, his diamond was the forbidden fruit loitering in his life. Or maybe it was he that was considered taboo in the eyes of her father, because he remembered his had nearly cried with joy and pride when he was informed of his friendship with her, along with his companionship with Albus Potter, where hers had yelled and screamed just as he had when he discovered she was a Slytherin. It worked both ways, he supposed. Their relationship as 'best friends' had seemingly prohibited him from expressing his long developed feelings for her, because he knew quite well that he was far out of her league and she would never see him as more than just that. Though, admittedly, he didn't know for sure; he had neither confronted her or another aside from Albus, who was a little biased on the situation considering she was his cousin, to confirm it. Like if he had the chance itself would ruin the very core of the relationship they already had just by being spoken aloud. He lusted after her, and his uncanny inability to see right through her frustrated him simply because he could not tell if she was doing the same to him.

He just wished he had someone other than her cousin to talk about this too, but it seemed to him like he had no other option. Little Lily was one; albeit she was two years younger than them, as he had caught her casting knowing smiles in his direction whenever he and Rose were left alone together - but he feared that if he had actually confronted her about it, she'd run off and tell her older brother, who'd tell Fred and Louis and Roxanne, who'd tell Hugo and Scorpius would be left in the hospital wing for weeks for fancying their cousin and sister. If it was anything he didn't want, it was James and the rest of the Weasley boys, who had taken less kindly to him than his best friends and their other older cousins. It wasn't a general hate, that much he knew for he'd never had any negative experiences with any of them. Boys will be boys after all, chasing off any male suitor they didn't see fit for their sister and/or cousin - which was surely, all, unless they'd chosen him upon mutual agreement. Scorpius understood. He knew what guys were like at this age, Hell he was one, and he knew the Weasley's were rightfully over protective. But that didn't make him any less afraid. He'd talk about it with his parents, but all his mum would do is gush and his father was never good at discussing any type of emotion even if he was reading off dialogue from a notecard. So he was left with Albus, conflicted Albus who wanted them to get together but disliked the idea of him getting physical with her, and who didn't say much of anything that helped him.

"Are you going to sit there staring at me for the rest of the morning or are you going to read?" Rose's voice seized him immediately from his reverie, her eyes cast upon the pages of the book he had gotten her but a delicate eyebrow raised in indifference. Upon the realization that he'd been staring at her, Scorpius's ears flushed red in embarrassment as he tore his gaze away from her abruptly, hardly managing to successfully stammer an unexpected apology on his behalf. The two Slytherin's settled in a prolonged and authentic silence then, the only noise having been the gentle lap of the lake's waters against the soil and the turning of pages, Scorpius succeeding in reading only one, full sentence before musing over his previous humiliation.

But, if he looked at her through the corner of his eye, he could notice how fastidiously pink her cheeks had gotten and although her eyes were on her book, the smile on her face told him that she wasn't reading either.

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**Hey everyone! That was kinda/sorta short, but I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it! As you read in the summary, this will be a strictly headcanon-based fanfiction - basically a series of headcanons found at nineteen-yearslater (.tumblr), other headcanon sites or my own! These just happen to be ones I agree with, as I have a huge list of them that I'm going to be writing and posting sometime in the foreseeable future. ****_None_**** of these headcanons are mine unless I say otherwise, so I take no credit for them, just for the drabble! That said, if you would like to suggest a headcanon in mind to me, I will be more than happy to write it out for you so long it doesn't overlap any that I post - because these will all be related in one way or another, which is fine by the way I've chosen them. But if it does, we'll work out something! :) This will be loosely based around Scorpius, Albus and Rose, but don't worry I'll be adding others as well. Also, with classes starting up shortly for me, update times will vary! **

**Anyhow, now that that's out of the way, a review with your thoughts will be greatly appreciated! Any flames will be ignored. Thank you!  
**


	2. Invasion

******Characters:** Rose, Hugo & Ron Weasley. Brief mentions of Hermione and others.**  
****Location:** Leeton, New South Wales Australia.**  
Headcanon: **Once, while home alone, Hugo and Rose barricaded themselves in Rose's room for hours when they saw a spider in the kitchen  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything but this piece of writing. Credit goes to J.K Rowling for her characters, and the anon who submitted this headcanon to nineteen-yearslater.

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**Invasion.  
**

It was the moment that Rose had stepped out of the fireplace had a pair of hands wrapped around her forearm, harshly tugging her to the side and bringing her to her hands and knees before she could even realize what was happening. One of said hands clamped harshly over her mouth to quiet the yelp of panicked surprise that had just hardly left her throat, but before she could bite the intruders fingers, they spoke, a hushed whisper somewhere near her ear. "Stop it, it's just me!" She supposed she should have been relieved it wasn't a stranger, ready to kidnap her, rape her and stab her until she died - but it was overridden by a sudden flash of indignation toward her younger brother for scaring the blinking lights out of her. Rose wrenched free from his grasp, turning to face the fourteen year old with narrowed brows. His wand was drawn, and he too was crouched down with his back pressed tightly against the wall as though he needed it for some kind of support.

"Hugo, are you serious! What in the bloody hell were you thi-" He cut her off before she could properly finish her sentence, quickly placing his hand over her mouth before she could protest any further.

He looked apologetic enough, his forehead creased with worry and golden eyes wide; and within them, a hidden terror that momentarily made her forget that he had just about given her a heart attack. Hugo pressed a finger to his lips, slowly removing his hand from her mouth as though she were afraid she was going to scream. Rose obeyed and kept quiet this time round, her stomach knotting with an apprehensive anticipation and concern. Was there _actually_ someone in the house? The thought alone made her heart pound quicker, thumping against her chest so hard she briefly worried it was going to leap straight out, as she had seen in one of the older muggle cartoons when visiting Grandma and Grandpa Granger over the holidays. She swallowed thickly, her hand moving hesitantly to where her wand was stashed within her boot, where she had kept it 99% of the time, just for precaution. She couldn't tell if her brother was just playing some sort of cruel joke on her or not, as it certainly wasn't something that he did, but she could never be too sure as paranoid as she always was. He gestured quietly toward the kitchen, pressing himself further against the wall to make room for her to look. Wand gripped tightly within her palm, ready to send a Bat-Bogey Hex straight at anybody she saw, she slid over and peaked sneakily around the archway and to the room adjacent.

Rose could have sworn in that very moment that her heart had stopped.

Oh, this was _so _not happening.

Before her own eyes, was the very bane of her existence. It was latched to one of the kitchen cabinets just above the stove, it's multiple legs long, hairy and unmoving - and it was about the size of a dinner plate. She should have been used to this, she knew, for throughout the sixteen years of living in Australia she was unfortunate enough to have come across some of these hideous monstrosities, but never quite as large as the one was before her. Albeit she loved living here, and was quite proud of where she'd come from, she was now certain that she supported her parents decision to move to London before the start of her sixth year even more than she had before. Spiders like that, if she could even call that a spider and not a monster, surely didn't exist there. Rose felt as though she was frozen her face pale and her limbs locked in place, her eyes not daring to look away from the unwelcomed creature invading their home. Her father had ungraciously passed his arachnophobia to both of his children, and where her mother was usually the one to kill the occasional spider around the house for the three too scared to do it themselves, Rose was almost certain she'd run out of the house if she ever saw what she and Hugo were looking at now. And she was quite tempted to, herself.

"It's been there for thirty minutes," her brothers voice broke her from her frightened trance and she turned to face him, the color gone from her cheeks, "probably longer. I was coming into the kitchen to grab some red vines from the pantry to snack on while I studied, and it crawled from the side. So I ran, been here ever since."

"You've seriously been sitting here for half an hour?" She questioned skeptically, though she was sure she would have done the same thing if she had first seen it.

"What else was I supposed to do!" Hugo whispered exasperatedly, throwing his hands up in his defense. "I hid here so I could keep an eye on it and warn anybody who came home."

Rose rolled her eyes, relaxing against the stone of the fireplace behind her, though the fear never quite leaving her. Her heart was still hammering against her ribcage, and she could feel her palm clam up around the tight grip she held upon her wand. "You could have done a better job than that, Hugh. If that was mum or dad you jumped on like that - two _war_ heroes I might add - you'd probably be dead by now." She retorted, softening her expression a tad when his turned a bright red with guilt and embarrassment. She heard him mumble something about 'spur of the moment,' but chose to ignore it, leaning round to check on the spider. It had moved some to the left, and one of it's legs was rubbing against the other and twitching. She fought the urge to throw up. Merlin she hated spiders. "What do you suppose we should do? You're the Ravenclaw here, is there some kind of spell that can exterminate these things, or something? Because I'm not going near…that."

"Me either." His words came as a sigh, an exhalation with words mixed in, so quiet Rose could hardly hear him. It was like he was afraid the spider would hear them and launch an attack. He fiddled with his wand, she chewed on her lip, and the pair of siblings stayed silent for quite some time. "We could floo mum," Hugo suggested with a shrug, "or maybe James to come kill it. You were just at the Potter's, weren't you?"

"It's twelve in the morning over there. I was just coming by to grab my stuff so I could spend the night" She shook her head and side glanced at her sibling. Albus probably figured she had ditched him and started watching the muggle films with Lily, or by himself, as she recalled telling him she'd only be a minute. It normally didn't take her long to pack a bag of clothes (although now that most of everyone's belongings were stashed in moving boxes around the house, it probably would've taken a little longer than she previously thought), but then again, she wasn't expecting to be caught up by a giant spider pillaging around the pantries in their kitchen. "James would never let us live it down, and mum would never leave work just to kill a spider for us. Remember she's stressed from all the work she has to do before she transfers to the UK MoM?" Rose bit at the inside of her cheek nervously as she observed Hugo's increasingly concerned expression before turning back to the kitchen. Before she could utter another word, she sucked in a breath of surprise and swatted aimlessly at her brother's arm before, at last, grabbing tight hold of his wrist. "Hugo..."

"What?"

"Where did it go?"

"...What?"

"Hugo, _where did it go?!_ It was right there!" Rose cried as she jumped to her feet alongside him, delicate ringlets of auburn hair bouncing around her shoulders. She tucked a strand behind her ear as she analyzed every visible nook and cranny of the kitchen she could see without stepping a foot inside. But it was gone, seeming vanished in mid air as though to purposely scare them even further than they already were. Hugo stared at her, she stared back - and they both made a mad dash for the stairwell. She reached the top first, and without a moments hesitation she hauled her brother inside her room and slammed the door shut behind him, firmly pressing her back against it as though she spider was large and strong enough to break it down. Thinking quickly and irrationally with fear, Hugo tore Rose's bathrobe from the hanger in her closet and pressed it against the bottom of the door, blocking the small sliver of an entrance it could possibly get to them with.

They stood still for a long moment, a pregnant pause of silence only broken by labored breathing and the beginnings of amused giggles escaping Rose's throat. Hugo's face broke out into a supported grin, and it was quite obvious both of their terrors had diminished now they were safely confined in the eldest Weasley's bedroom. Rose eased herself from the door and to her work desk nearest the window, at which Kolya sat within his cage and leisurely fluffed at his wings. She didn't know how quickly it would get to him, but she figured she'd send Albus an owl to let him know that she was, unfortunately, not going to make it and had been caught up with more packing. A little white lie didn't hurt anybody, and now that she thought about it, being trapped inside her room with a tedious younger brother would be the perfect time to gather everything she hadn't yet. After all, the move was in less than five days now. Rose scribbled an ludicrously short apology to her cousin, otherwise her best friend, and rolled the parchment up for Kolya to take out the opened window. She had a feeling it wouldn't be getting to him in quite sometime, and she momentarily felt bad for sending her owl on such an expedition when she could have just floo'd the Potters. But, she quickly reminded herself, she wasn't about to go downstairs until that _thing_ was dead.

She didn't know how long they'd stayed barricaded within her bedroom, until she heard the fireplace roar with life. The pair of siblings both simultaneously stopped what they were doing; Hugo placing one of her many Slytherin trinkets he'd been fiddling with back inside its respective box and Rose halting mid-fold with one of her many Weasley sweaters. But before either of the two could run downstairs to alert whichever parent was home of the spider lurking somewhere downstairs, Ronald Weasley's frightened, admittedly girlish shout echoed through the halls, closely followed by a slammed door.

Hugo sighed. "See what happens when we're not there to warn them?"

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**So, there you have it! Headcanon number two. Please leave your thoughts in a review :) Also, quick thanks at HarryPotterCat (aka admin of nineteen-yearslater) for her review and taking the time to read this! I was surprised to see you saw!  
**


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